Flash fiction set in Koru

Koru, one of the five countries that make up the continent of Ehrian. Although, that said, one that I'm thinking of changing the name of, mainly because that makes the spoken language 'Koruan', which is little too close to 'Korean'. Maybe 'Korun' works, or 'Kor'. 'Caw, listen to me speak my language'. Bleh.

Anyway! A bit of dunking in the politics of Koru.

General Sun-Ji looked out upon his empire, the ghost of a smile touching his lips. The sun was setting, painting everything in shades of blood; the warmth of the day had already begun to sink into the coolness of evening, and a faint mist was rising from the reflection pools in the shadows far below.

His son, still standing at the desk a few feet behind him, cleared his throat gently. “Father,” the young man said, “The staff are still in revolt. We must do something.” His plea echoed around the hard walls and floor, sounding empty.

“I have already put measures in place,” Sun-Ji said. “Soldiers have set up a perimeter, and the workers are being contained.” He half-turned and graced his son with a smile. “You worry too much, Mako.”

“They will fight.”

“They will die, then,” Sun-Ji said, turning back to the sunset.  Even at fifty, his back was straight and his shoulders broad. He closed his eyes and listened. Whoever had designed the Imperial Office had known his audience. Every movement, however slight, was amplified. There was the sound of a step, almost too tiny to hear, and the susurration of fabric moving against skin. The slightly uneven sound of Mako’s breathing, and underneath it, something out of place, off to the right.

Dungeons and Dragons

I go through phases of writing and not writing. I like to call these 'terms'. I have yet to find a way to properly integrate my work life (primary school teacher) with that of being a writer, and it bugs me. I need to make more effort.

What DOES keep me going week to week is writing D&D adventures for the party to tackle. Last time (about three weeks ago unfortunately) was a real doozy for them; someone in their party, an NPC, turned out to be in the employ of a bad guy and also lying to them the whole time; the actual bad guy is in jail; then, zombies. Lots of zombies. It was like 'zoooooooooooombiiiiiiiiiies' for a while.

We left them lying on a bridge after a tide of zombies left them. What delights will I have in store for them this Sunday?

Well, it involves a pair of miniatures I've purchased specially. That's all I'm saying.

In a way it's one of the most frustrating things; I can write D&D but I can't talk about it to any of the people involved. It would give them meta-game knowledge. So that's my wife, my flatmate and four of my best friends out of the equation. Even though one of those friends doesn't play, she's going out with (and living with) one of the players.

It's just something I have to put up with, and, so far at least, the work has not been in vain; things are continuing apace and everyone is enjoying themselves. Well, let's see if that's still the case after Sunday!

Adventure 7 - The House of Pleasure

This is, obviously, not somewhere I can write a chapter of Poisonroot. This is about a brothel. I love brothels; they provide so much opportunity for character play!

Anyway, I painted several new miniatures just for this session. The characters entered the House and chose, in the end, to have their memories wiped. They gained experience, of course, and are left with a lingering need to complete the quest for the Succubus. She is an interesting character; the players' Insight checks were enough to tell that she was telling the truth. This suggests a couple of things: Either she has somehow turned to the side of good, or she was lying and is simply very, very good at it.

Whichever the case is, it didn't end in violence, which is a shame in a way because I'd taken the time to create the map in Roll20 as well as in reality.

I have two players, Futch and Ostardva, who play remotely most weeks; they connect via Skype and are able to see the players and me, able to read our faces and glean emotions that way. We initially used Skype for both but found it incredibly complicated when I made a set; Chris and Phil couldn't see what was going on and couldn't therefore easily get immersed. Now, they use Roll20 to see the tabletop. I think it's incredibly useful, especially in combat; there was plenty of options for combat in this week's adventure. Had they gone in all guns blazing the women would have turned on them as minions; had they decided to attack the Madame they would have found a succubus, two minions and two rattlesnakes as their enemies; to be honest, it could still happen, though I'm not sure it would make much sense story-wise for them to fight the Madame now.

I live in hope.

Adventure 6 - The Windmill

So the adventurers had fun with this one. The Goliath in the basement was one of Kali's family and she instantly saw red, all-but killing the Professor. In the end, she freed Summerchild who did the deed herself before returning to the town and letting the party carry on to Hillrest and, beyond that, Fennica.

Adventure 5 - Dunmarket's Sewers

The party ended up trawling through a sewer. They severely broke this one; the gelatinous cube that was going to be a major threat for them ended up being their pet that killed a load of my kobolds. Still, I learned a bit from this, as every. Future adventures will prove to be harder to beat.

Adventure 4 - Bounties

Two more PCs joined the party, so I planned a fairly straightforward mission. Needless to say, they came out on top and ended up with a Unicorn tail hair to call on whenever they wanted.

Adventure 3 - Leaving South Porton

The adventurers sadly took the decision to leave Porton with its bevy of possible quests. Never mind, there were lots of different things to do. Here's one of them! Also included are my own personal travel house rules. They managed a couple of good days and one wolf fight. When they rolled the wolf fight again, I did't make them go through the same thing again. It was a flexible house rule.

Adventure 2 - South Porton Investigation

Two of the people I play with regularly tell me that this was my best adventure so far. It's so good that I'm loosely basing the next adventure on some of the same ideas. It had the right amount of 'creepy' mixed with a bit of a fight.

It's loosely inspired by a quest from Skyrim. Hey, inspiration has to come from somewhere, right? There were two other options for where they could go from where they were, and I determined that this wasn't at all the way to run things. In all future weeks I guaranteed I had a route forward for them so that I could plan much better adventures. Planning three only to have two completely nuked out of existence on contact was too much.

Adventure 1 - South Porton

The adventurers took a rather... criminal route. I was quite surprised. For this first adventure I fell back on safety and went with the Wizards of the Coast pre-made adventure Kobold Hall. Never again, but it served for the first one.

Adventure 0 - Hydra Attack!

I started a D&D game. We were all a bit unsure of what we were doing, and this adventure was a good way to get us all into the system.

South-Western Lyria - Map

I'm playing a game of D&D with the fantastic John Aggs at the moment. I made some of the maps available to the players as part of the game on the basis that they'd have seen them or, in one case, be given them.

John was kind enough to produce this:

Location: South Porton

As part of the D&D campaign I'm running, I've typed up a description of South Porton. The players have now left South Porton and are unlikely to return there in the near future; with that in mind I've decided to put the description of South Porton up on the blog. To be honest the majority of these things are either already-discovered by the players or things they could find out by asking a passer-by.